Think7 - a smart manufactuing unit made in India

The 18-member Bengaluru-based company, which was incorporated in December 2013 and has been working with own funds till date, has more than 30 customers.J Vignesh | ET Bureau | February 26, 2016, 10:24 IST

BENGALURU: Zubin Jagtiani has always been an integral part of the shop floor – area in a factory where the production happens – thanks to his family’s business. Over a period of time, he felt the need to solve a simple problem: How to give the right instructions to the right people at the right time?

He searched the existing market for a solution, but found none. He finally decided to take the plunge and build one along with Raghu Shenoy, a friend of his brother-in-law. Thus began the journey of Think7, a shop-floor management solutions startup.

"I didn’t find anything when I was looking for a solution. In that process, I figured that this problem was not just for SMEs (small and medium enterprises), but it was rather across sizes. The idea of German precision is well known. They build stuff that works. We wanted to highlight that we can build a product like this in India," said Jagtiani.

Think7 offers a management suite consisting of two components. The first is a software solution where one can have check sheets, interpret drawings of the product, do data analysis and get detailed reports, among a host of other features. The second offering is a Think7 piston, which is basically a rectangular box-like smart machine controller. The piston is attached to the machine so as to track it and keep giving real-time updates. The whole management suite can be accessed remotely, thereby eliminating the use of papers on the shop floor.

Each machine is also fitted with a tablet, which keeps a record of all activities, thus making the factory ‘smart and connected’. "All these years we were doing documentation from drawing to shop floor, all in paper, including instructions to (machine) operators and inspectors. The intention was to go paperless. When Think7 came up, it was something like connecting design office to shop floor to dispatches, we were able to make manufacturing environment automated," said M Vanamurthy, deputy general manager at Turbo Energy, a TVS group company.

The 18-member Bengaluru-based company, which was incorporated in December 2013 and has been working with own funds till date, has more than 30 customers, mostly in the automotive space and a few in the aerospace sector. The business model revolves around two aspects – the software solution is run on an annual subscription model and the hardware component is calculated on the number of machines and plants that a particular client has.

"In the future, we are even planning to introduce hardware as a service. We are surely open to investment, but our business does not depend on it," said Jagtiani.